How some real Indians felt about Chief Wahoo -- Bill Livingston

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Not until the last week of my last visit to Cleveland Indians' spring training in 1992 in Tucson, the final season before they temporarily relocated to Florida, did I really ask Native Americans about Chief Wahoo, the comic strip Indian with the fire engine red face and the big grin.

"Where's the nearest Indian reservation?" I said that morning at the spring training facility, Hi Corbett Field.

"The Tohono O'odhams," the press box aide told me.

Google says they are the second-largest Native American Nation in the country, but Google wasn't around then.

"Try the Yaquis. You know, like the light heavweight, Yaqui Lopez," the aide said.

Alvaro "Yaqui" Lopez, a Mexican of Yaqui heritage, is considered one of the greatest boxers not to win a world championship.

Now that I had a suitably martial destination in mind, I drove 15 miles to the Pascua Yaqui settlement, armed with a folding Indians season schedule on which Wahoo and his manic grin were plastered.

Deer dancers and real Indians

When I arrived, a Lenten parade was taking place, featuring a deer dancer with antlers. I waited until the paraders had moved on, then asked where I might find the tribe's chief. I wanted to ask him, now that the Indians were moving out, what he thought about the whole idea of Chief Wahoo as a symbol and Indians as a team name.

Not much, it turned out.

When the Indians first moved to Tucson, I was told, the young boys on the Yaqui reservation thought the team was going to be made up of real Native Americans.

That was their first disillusionment.

Not a close resemblance

A bigger one was Wahoo.

I unfolded the schedule and asked several members of the reservation how they felt about the cartoon chief.

"Do I look like that?" one said.

"Do any of my people look like that?" the Yaqui chief said

I began to feel a palpable sense of embarrassment about Wahoo that I never had before. That was only because I had never cared enough to find out what real Indians thought, though.

Drew Carey

At the 1995 World Series, I spoke with comedian Drew Carey, a Clevelander and fervent Cleveland sports fan. At the time, he was an outspoken defender of Wahoo.

Confronted by American Indian Movement activists outside the ballpark before the first game of the divisional series against Boston in Cleveland, Carey did not back down.

"I'll tell you what. The Indians are going to win the pennant and they're going to play the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. Now, what do you think of that?" he said, smirking.

All that happened. The Indians lost.

Years later, Drew had lost some of his illusions about Wahoo, I found, when I was interviewing Carey for a book of Cleveland sports lists.

In the years since that 1995 remark, Carey had become a popular television star and had done stand-up comedy routines at Indian casinos.

"I used to be for Wahoo, but because it hurts a lot of people, I say they should get rid of it," he said.

Unfathomably, the racist symbol will remain on display on the field for one more season. After that, you will still see Wahoo, grinning idiotically from fans' caps and shirts at Progressive Field. But not on the players' caps or uniforms.

From the looks of him, Wahoo could have just hit a jackpot at the slots. But the real Indians weren't laughing with him.